Divine inspiration: The immaculate is reborn in time for Easter Sunday

BY TRACEY O'SHAUGHNESSY | REPUBLICAN-AMERICANThe baldachin around the altar and mosaics at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Waterbury have been recently conserved and cleaned by the John Canning Co. of Cheshire, just in time for Easter. Steven Valenti Republican-AmericanThe baldachin around the altar and mosaics at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Waterbury have been recently conserved and cleaned by the John Canning Co. of Cheshire, just in time for Easter. Steven Valenti Republican-AmericanThe baldachin around the altar and mosaics at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Waterbury have been recently conserved and cleaned by the John Canning Co. of Cheshire, just in time for Easter. Steven Valenti Republican-AmericanThe baldachin around the altar and mosaics at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Waterbury have been recently conserved and cleaned by the John Canning Co. of Cheshire, just in time for Easter. Steven Valenti Republican-AmericanThe baldachin around the altar and mosaics at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Waterbury have been recently conserved and cleaned by the John Canning Co. of Cheshire, just in time for Easter. Steven Valenti Republican-AmericanThe baldachino around the altar and mosaics at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Waterbury have been recently conserved and cleaned by the John Canning Co. of Cheshire, just in time for Easter. Photos by Steven Valenti Republican-American

Every church is a spiritual statement, an incarnation of faith meted out in wood, stone, earth – and space.

“You have to take the whole church as a composition,” said David Tricia, of John Canning Co. in Cheshire. “When you come in, you immediately know you are in a house of worship. You have an immediate sense of mystery and mystique and reverence.”

This Easter, worshippers in Waterbury’s Basilica of the Immaculate Conception will celebrate Mass under a radiant, newly cleaned and conserved mosaic ceiling and baldachin, or baldacchino, around the altar. The conservation, performed over the last month by the John Canning Co., was part of an ongoing series of updates intended to maintain the 90-year-old basilica’s impressive interior. The conservation of the mosaics and baldacchino has been among the most visually arresting because both are central to the church’s altar and are the first visual statement of faith visitors see when they enter the Renaissance-style church.

The baldacchino, a ceremonial canopy of marble, limestone and wood, “brings you up to the really golden dome” above the altar, said David Riccio, a professional associate of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works and one of the leading authorities in traditional and ornamental plaster.

“That’s become the main feature of the sanctuary. It draws your eyes up. So there’s an architectural transition happening, there’s an art transition that’s happening but those two things in concert with each other bring you into a spiritual transition as you come into the space. A person coming in recognizes that they are being transcended into a house of worship. It is all about lifting your spirit, and lifting your mind.”

And the stunning proportions of the building help. “The Immaculate is, in my opinion, the finest example of classical proportions perhaps in New England,” said John Canning. “The classical proportions are so exact and precise and that is, of course, a testament to the original architects.” The building was designed by the celebrated Boston-based Maginnis & Walsh architectural firm, headed by Charles Donah McGinnis (1867-1955) and Timothy Francis Walsh (1868-1934).

The Connecticut Community Foundation provided a $48,553 grant through the Middlebrook Family Fund, created by Georgianna Middlebrook to honor her husband. Middlebrook designated the funds to restore the baldacchino.

While the scaffolding was in place to restore the 24K gold leaf, the Rev. Christopher Ford and other parishioners noticed that the ceiling mosaics, which depict the Virgin Mary, St. Catharine, St. Augustine and the four Evangelists, among other images, were deeply in need of cleaning. Ford placed a notice in the church bulletin, seeking donations for the cleaning, and subsequently received nearly all the funds necessary to do the work.

“We were up so high, I felt that it would make sense to clean the mosaic while we were up there,” said Ford, who would not disclose the cost of the project. “I appealed to the parishioners through the bulletin … and I had 25 people who came forward and we pretty much funded the whole thing.”

Riccio said the conservation produced remarkable results. “When you see the baldacchino now and that incredible, incredible mosaic above it, it has some gold, it has some bronze, so it looks like cast bronze and brass,” he said. “It’s this duality of color but also a duality of light direction so some of the baldacchino reflects more light and some of it refracts that light.”

ESTABLISHED IN 1928, the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception is modeled on the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. That church, which includes architectural elements from the fifth century, is the only patriarchal basilica of the four in Rome to have retained its paleo-Christian structures, according to the Vatican’s website. The Immaculate’s architects also designed the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., Riccio said. “That basilica and the details of it are more complete than some of the churches in that style than you see in Italy,” he said.

The baldacchino in Waterbury is composed of marble columns and hand-carved limestone capitals, surrounded by wood. “This mosaic is one of the larger mosaic domes you’ll see in the United States,” he said. It is composed of different types of stone tesserae, or small blocks of stone, tile, glass and other materials. To clean them, Riccio had to create a pH-neutral solution to remove the candle wax, dirt, grease and soot that had adhered to the tesserae over the years.

The baldacchino itself is among the most ancient architectural methods to convey stature. It originated as a means of honoring a personage by constructing (or carrying in procession) a canopy over an individual, wrote architectural historian Steven W. Semes of the University of Notre Dame, in an email.

The word itself comes from the Italian “Baldacco,” which means Baghdad, then the chief source of the rugs and fabrics used for canopies in churches, Semes said. The most famous in the world is Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s eight-story baldacchino (1624) that rises over the altar of St. Peter’s in Rome. That structure sits directly in the center of St. Peter’s, where the nave (or long aisle in the center of the church) intersects with the transept, or perpendicular hallway directly in front of the altar. In St. Peter’s, the altar is positioned directly above the tomb of St. Peter.

Historians have dated the oldest surviving baldacchino to the 9th century Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravena, Italy, although other references to these canopies date as far back as the Emperor Constantine (280-337). Additionally, the painstaking description of how to secure and preserve the Ark of the Covenant in Hebrew scriptures were an obvious impulse for early Christian architecture. The early Christian church went back and forth between constructing altars set against flat walls and others underneath canopies.

The baldacchino “had the practical advantage of making the altar more visually prominent in a large interior space. Theologically, it is a way of honoring the altar, accentuated by a depiction of the dove of the Holy Spirit on the ceiling of the canopy, signifying the action of the Spirit in the sacramental action of the Eucharist,” Semes wrote in an email from Rome, where he is now teaching.

The Counter-Reformation, with its emphasis on emotionalism and visual splendor, helped spread the adoption of baldacchino in other churches. The most familiar one in the United States is likely the one designed by Ralph Adams Cram at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, though most cathedrals from the late 19th century seem to have them, Semes wrote.

AMONG THOSE DONATING to the restoration of the mosaics were dancers from the Horgan School of Dance in Naugatuck, who perform at the St. Patrick’s Day festivities at the basilica. Irene Horgan, of the dance school, said she asked her dancers to help restore the mosaic of the Virgin on the ceiling. “We thought it was appropriate,” Horgan said. “Irish immigrants contributed to the building of the basilica and many other landmarks in the area. There is a history of the Irish in Waterbury, in particular, contributing to the building of the basilica and other Catholic churches. Now, so many years later, they need to be maintained and it was just a small but heartfelt contribution the dancers made to that.”

Joe and Rosemary Gurga, of Sterling Security Systems, also donated funds for the mosaic work. “I couldn’t imagine doing all that work without cleaning the mosaic,” said Joe Gurga, who lives in Southington and still attends the Waterbury church. “It’s such a magnificent church. The priests are so nice there. Everything is so nice there. When you walk out of there, you feel like you’ve been somewhere. Everything is so uplifting.”

Ford said he was impressed by the conservation work and by the response to his request for donations from parishioners – half of whom come from outside the city.

“There is this incredible pride in this sacred space,” Ford said. “They love it. People who grew up in Waterbury especially tell me that you wouldn’t go downtown, no matter what your parish, without visiting the Immaculate.”